MINSK, April 4. /TASS/. The Western countries are trying to persuade Tbilisi to open a "second front" against Russia in connection with the events in Ukraine, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, said during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday.

"We see persistent attempts by Washington, Brussels and London to persuade the Georgian leadership to open a so-called second front. They see that the situation on the battlefield is not in Ukraine’s favor," Naryshkin said.

He added that the West trying to persuade Tbilisi that now was the right moment for an attempt to regain control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Georgia regularly accuses some Western politicians (Ukrainian ones as well) of trying to drag the country into a military conflict with Russia. President Salome Zourabichvili previously stated that she considered speculations about a "second front" as a conspiracy theory.

On April 3, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said that no one had the power to stop hostilities in Ukraine. As a result, he stressed, large parts of the country had been turned "into a firing range." He pointed out that the plan of Georgia's enemies to "Ukrainianize the country," in other words, turn Georgia into a test site, too, and to open a "second front" against Russia, had failed. Garibashvili said that the economic growth and reduction of inflation and poverty observed in the country would be impossible without preserving peace.